


Gotoku's histories

by baezil



Category: Pokemon + Nobunaga no Yabou | Pokemon Conquest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 09:34:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20851277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baezil/pseuds/baezil
Summary: Listen, I love pokemon conquest, but a lotta that post-game content has issues. Wrote this a while back after playing through The Rose of Ransei postgame story because I felt like my chars would have some things to say about the way the game frames their motives...





	Gotoku's histories

I am one of the last alive who saw the Days of Unification, and they’ve begun to write the histories of how that war changed the world. What those histories fail to tell in any detail is what the war did to The Peacemaker. The histories tell us he withdrew to seek enlightenment. I tell you, he withdrew because he was afraid of what he’d become. They may call him Peacemaker, but his war did not bring peace. His war brought chaos, as he knew it would. Chaos enough to confuse and slow Nobunaga’s armies. And after Nobunaga bent the knee, after The Peacemaker had swept through the Kingdoms, the world that he left behind was just broken fragments and the petty squabbles of displaced nobles the war had turned into rogues, pilgrims, and wayward warriors.

The Peacemaker did not withdraw to seek enlightenment. The Peacemaker withdrew because he could not bear to watch what he had done to the world. They seek to make the Peacemaker a god, and what I right will soon become heresy in the annals of history. So. Let it become heresy. I will be dead, and I must speak even if my writings are burned. In the end the Peacemaker doubted everything he had done and spent his aging years trying to hold together the torn pieces of himself. He had no strength left to spare to hold together the pieces of the world.

And these new histories do more than erase; they lie. They tell us she is called Oichi, The Rose of Ransei because of her beauty, that she won her titles in some women’s squabble—The Bloom of the Rose, they call it, saying it was a contest to prove who was the most graceful woman in the seven kingdoms. Yet it was I, Gotoku, Oichi’s Thorn, who stood by her at the Battle of the Last Leaves where her titles were won, and I say, lies. The writers of these histories did not see her hold the bridge at Avia so that we could cross and make our attack on the citadel. They did not see her ride on the back of Sachi, Oichi’s Thunder, the dragonite of Aurora, and with her hold back the massed armies of the heights. They did not see Kai, The Fire of Summer hold Oichi’s flank against the massed armies of the heights. They did not see me take the citadel and drive the household retainers to the very portico.

The writers of these histories do not mention that when we fought, we were no longer young. The War of the Rose began when we were all past forty. The histories wish to paint us as beautiful ladies engaged in decorous quarrels borne of gentle boredom. And again I say, lies. They paint Oichi as a girl, head held low, demure and blushing, an Oichi I had almost forgotten ever existed; but I tell you that by the time she began the War of the Rose her face was deeply lined and stern, her back was as straight as steel, and after the Peacemaker left she bowed to no man again. She never lost her patience, but she had long since lost her hesitation.

Oichi did not go to war to prove her beauty, she went to war because the lower kingdoms yet again threatened to fall apart. Because Masamune saw a chance at power and control and blocked the passes at Avia and the south was starving. Because when the Peacemaker abandoned Ransei, he abandoned Oichi as well and left her without protection and she became her own strength, fiercer even than her brother. Few see this, because unlike her brother Oichi had the wisdom, the restraint, the kindness to temper her ferocity, and she did not leave a broken world in her path. 

All this I remember so well that I can still see it. I saw Sachi and Oichi stand on the bridge and saw the sun shine from Oichi’s sword so that the enemy was blinded and fell back. I felt the ground shake and heard the cliff’s echo with Sachi’s fury, and it hurt me like an arrow wound to leave them there when Oichi commanded me to take the citadel. I felt the heat of Kai’s flames protecting our backs as we took the lower hills. And it was I, riding Squall’s Fury, who took the heights, blackened the pillars of the citadel at Avia and destroyed the centuries-old Doors of the Clouds and destroyed the Hall of Silk, and . I never learned Oichi’s restraint, nor her kindness.

My writings will be dismissed as nostalgic ramblings. I am a woman, they will say, and I could never attain the lofty perspective required for truly great history. I am one hundred and seven, and my age will count against me. And yet these words are worth writing, and the truth worth the telling, if only for my own conscience.

I write this in my own hand to tell you— we did not go to war for pleasure. We went to war because the world was in pieces, because we were desperate to hold together what little we still had, and because in the world the Peacemaker left behind war was the only way left to us.


End file.
